The Prose and Poetry of New York's Favorite Nerd Irishman

Throwback Thursday: the Marx “Iwo Jima Playset”

Now here is an incredibly happy Ghost of Christmas Past — the Louis Marx and Company’s “Iwo Jima Playset” was absolute heaven for a second-grade boy in 1979. And I was lucky I got it then — it was the last year that the set was manufactured; the legendary toymaker, which had been in business since 1919, finally ceased operations a year later. And then the character of war toys seemed to change altogether, with the advent of more fantastic, sanitized and cartoonish major toy franchises like “G.I. Joe” in the 1980’s.